My Windows Bootcamp partition won't start up after hard drive was moved to a new computer

[myhatrules]

The logic board on my mid-2012 MacBook pro recently fried itself, so my dad (who has a background in computer programming) moved the physical hard drive from my old computer to an early-2011 MacBook pro. Everything is perfectly in tact except for my Windows Bootcamp partition.

When I restart my computer and hold the option key, the disk doesn't appear for me to select, just the Mac disk. But the Bootcamp disk appears on my desktop, shows up in Disk Utility, and shows up in System Preferences as an option to restart to. When I use System Preferences to restart, it gives me a black screen with text that says that the startup disk is missing and to insert one and restart by pressing any key, but inserting the USB I have the Windows .iso on doesn't result in anything happening.

Is there a way I can get the partition to work again without deleting the entire partition and starting over?

I'm on OSX 10.11.5, so using Disk Utility to repair disk permissions isn't an option I can use, not even in recovery mode.

 

[DeltaMac]

I think that one major difference that you have, is that your older MacBook Pro may not support Windows 10 through BootCamp, and booting to a USB Windows installer also does not easily happen.
The main difference is the USB 3 bus on the newer Mac. Your early 2011 MBPro only has USB 2.0, and that changes the Windows hardware boot support (won't boot from USB, at least not as easily as the later Macs)
But, you can use your Windows .iso to burn a Windows installer DVD. THAT should boot your 2011 MBPro to Windows, and you can run a Windows repair install, or the command line steps to fix the windows partition, and make it bootable again on the different Mac. The different hardware MAY mean that there will be challenges with the drivers that Windows needs to use all the Mac's hardware and ports. That might just be a simple matter of updating the drivers, through the Device Manager, but it also may need to have Windows reinstalled. Hard to say, until you get a bootable Windows installer DVD to work.

 

[myhatrules]

I think that one major difference that you have, is that your older MacBook Pro may not support Windows 10 through BootCamp, and booting to a USB Windows installer also does not easily happen.
The main difference is the USB 3 bus on the newer Mac. Your early 2011 MBPro only has USB 2.0, and that changes the Windows hardware boot support (won't boot from USB, at least not as easily as the later Macs)
But, you can use your Windows .iso to burn a Windows installer DVD. THAT should boot your 2011 MBPro to Windows, and you can run a Windows repair install, or the command line steps to fix the windows partition, and make it bootable again on the different Mac. The different hardware MAY mean that there will be challenges with the drivers that Windows needs to use all the Mac's hardware and ports. That might just be a simple matter of updating the drivers, through the Device Manager, but it also may need to have Windows reinstalled. Hard to say, until you get a bootable Windows installer DVD to work.

Ok, I think I understand all of this. Could this be remedied by using a USB 3.0 adapter, or is burning the .iso to the DVD the only option (what kind of DVD should I use)? Also, I'm running Windows 7 on my partition, if that changes anything.

 

[chrfr]

Ok, I think I understand all of this. Could this be remedied by using a USB 3.0 adapter, or is burning the .iso to the DVD the only option (what kind of DVD should I use)? Also, I'm running Windows 7 on my partition, if that changes anything.

IF you just have the actual Windows ISO on a USB drive, rather than the contents of that ISO file, there's no way you'll ever be able to boot from that.
The 2011 MBP likely does not support booting from a USB Windows installer, so you'll want to burn a DVD.

 

[vworks]

I am afraid you cant do it.
It is related to the BIOS and the hardware. You put the HDD in a new hardware environment...the bios is not recognizing it. It will not boot.
Changing the BIOS? Might work , I am not able to tell you how